I have a bad feeling Ellies unknowingly been hired to advertise for an adult website. At the same time this comic is PG-13, so this could all be leading into one big joke. guess we’ll have to wait and see

With the unemployed being the key target audence, its highly probable that its something akin to Monster(dot)com where people can post help wanted adds or stores about their previous places of employment.

Social networking to find not just a job, but a good one. That idea isnt too bad in of itself if one can attract enough attention to it.

I can’t imaging someone would try to advertise a job site like Monster wearing what both of them are wearing. Not a job site, and for something like Digg or Reddit what would they need a booth for? Not selling anything, not enrolling anyone, and unless Danny has a product I’d agree with his friends

Why not have frivolous fun with the unemployment checks to pass the time till then?

I know at lest 2 people who bought new video-game systems with their unemployment checks before paying the landlord what was due. (Sadly, in both cases, the landlords did notice the discarded boxes from said systems in the garbage.)

You cant imagine people advertising for a site like Monster(dot)com dressed as they are dressed? Or them advertising at a con?

Let me ask you, have you ever actually BEEN to a con event? I have seen several rather attractive women attending in outfits far more revealing than what Ellie is wearing.

I have seen, off the top of my head (the ones that stand out most) a *very* accurate Misato Katsuragi in her trademark Little Black Dress from episode 1. I have seen an absurdly accurate Revy from Black Lagoon, and I saw a wedding between two Gundam fans where everyone in attendence was dressed as a soldier from SEED excluding the bride and groom, the groom was a fairly accurate Athren Zala while the bride… *nose bleeds*

The bride’s wedding dress was freaking Meer Cambel.

Take it from someone thats been to quite a few cons and has seen quite a bit. Ellie and this new guy would blend in perfectly.

Kenju, how comfortable would you feel applying to a ‘professional’ job that was advertising with someone dressed as either of them? If I’m reading this comic and commenting you can assume that I am at least somewhat familiar with cons and the fan’s behavior there. Heck, car shows have more mainstream appeal and the show girls there are just as scantily clad.

If I am looking for employment, I dont look a gift horse in the mouth, same as anyone else who is actually looking for a job. I work in construction, so 9/10 the formen I am working under looks EXACTLY like the guy shown here, but with a few subtle differences.

First, they are in their 50s not their 20s.
Second, they are about 150lbs heavier at minimum.
Third, they have a full beard.
Fourth, they wear a baseball cap or cowboy hat.

Add those to the image of the guy here and you have every single boss I have worked under for the last decade. And at $10.50 an hour, I’m not going to complain about that.

Point is when job hunting, you at minimum investigate everything that comes your way. You look under every rock and you check every nook and crany to dig up what you can find.

After that you weigh out your options. Is this a job I CAN do? Is this I job I would be WILLING to do? Is the pay enough to justify the expenses? What advantages can I gain from working here?

This boils down to beggers cant be choosers. There is a dire need for nurses in many hospitals around the USA, know why? Because everyone wants to be a doctor and make a ton of $, which has lead to their being a large number of unemployed doctors, who would rather take unemployment checks than lower wage.

Bayonetta only appeared at ONE E3 show, and it was a great advertisment on Sega’s part. They’ve been declining to the point of obscurity and that contest brought them out of a decade long slump.

Besides to be fair, that model DID look just like her, so I thought it was cool. She also carried herself well, not many women stand at nearly 6 foot and can walk around in boots with Desert Eagles for heels.

Its a spinoff series developed by Platinum Games (Metal Gear Revengence fame) that takes place in the same universe as Devil May Cry. Came out back in 2009 when Sega was on its death bed due to a lack of sales.

Basically they were going bankrupt and were going to shut down, so they decided to go out with a bang and make a game that was all fun with zero substance and little to redeem itself.

All action, all fun, all fan service.

Primary character, one Bayonetta is a female Dante who uses guns and is all around over sexualized along with some questionable hints throughout the game concerning the background events and past of some characters.

What they didnt expect was the game to pull them from the brink and keep them afloat for several years till they could get back on their feet.

Personally while I’m not thrilled about *everything* in the game, I have to admit its very well done, a completly unique approch to combat that they were smart enough to patent, an engaging story with great twists once you start paying attention, and pretty good voice acting to boot.

It drew a lot of flack from feminist however for obvious reasons and its unvailing at the 2008 E3 didnt exactly help in that reguard. They found a model who looked almost exactly like Bayonetta and made her a costume, had her parade around the event for a few hours, POed a lot of feminist.

Yes she is over sexualized and yes she is eye candy, but at the same time she’s probably the most powerful woman in fictional history. She acts the way she does because she can and because she wants to, not because she has to. The fact that she basically kills GOD at the end of the game backs that up lol

Just look up Bayonetta at E3 and you’ll see what I mean. You want to find the one with long hair in a beehive bun, thats the one from 09, the one with the short pixie cut is from the second game and her 2013 debut…which POed a lot more people due to the game being Wii U exclusive -.-

Dude promotes his site dressed for laundry day? Maybe he also has a costume to change into? That matches Ellie’s? Minus the boob window of course..?

So I feel bad for Ellie – she seems to want to work hard in an honest job, and this job just sounds… Well, let’s say I’m not expecting her to get paid. And I don’t think there’s a whole lot of legal recourse she could pursue – or afford – if she didn’t. The whole thing seems fishy to me.

Still, she’s just trying to pay her rent. I wonder if judgmental Quinn would approve?

Stiff Ellie on a job at your own risk. Aside from the risk to your sensitive bits getting immediately smashed by foot, fist, drywall or errant object, there are a lot of “gray area” points sufficiently motivated cops could go to. That ice cream truck might well find itself with a large number of broken taillights…not to mention how…interesting…civil forfeiture laws are down in Florida.

Crushed testicles, vehicle smashed/stolen by the local constabulary, or being suspended by his soul patch from the highest support beam in the expo center would all be things that could happen to Danny if he fails to pay Ellie. But sadly none of those things will cover her rent (they totally should?!).

Also, Danny is working with two other people, neither of whom live in the US – the company might be foreign. IANAL but it seems like civil forfeiture might be difficult in that case. At least against the company. Especially just for two days of pay. Two days of pay for just standing around. Also handing out flyers. Also having breasts. And wearing that costume.

I mean, not that Danny’s safe, or anything. But do you really think Ellie wants his ice cream truck?

Yes I know what civil forfeiture is. Which is why I’m doubtful of it’s effectiveness going against a company potentially headquartered halfway around the globe. In a country that might just laugh and give a great big middle finger if the state of Florida demanded that they make Danny’s employers pay Ellie $200 or however much they owe her.

Of course, we don’t know enough about the company or how invested in it Danny is, so I’m just speculating. And besides, I doubt that Danny’s buddies would have his back if this whole thing blew up, especially if they’re already unhappy with him (it sounds like they are). So he may be on his own, and Ellie might just be raking in the scrap metal.

Either way, original point withdrawn – a comic about litigation proceedings for $200 of unpaid wages sounds incredibly boring.

Bear in mind that it may not be a matter of directly getting Ellie paid. It may be used as an unauthorized punitive tool, a “you screwed my daughter over, Johnny Soul-patch, so now your life is misery until you get out of my state” sort of thing.

Isn’t the question not of a global company with far flung assets, but a question of if Danny hired Ellie directly outside of the normal company hierarchy?

Personally, I’m of the thought that Danny hired Ellie directly as an independent contractor, and as such, Ellie should have avenues to place liens and such on Danny’s personal conveyance until at such time that she has been paid.

Ah yes, the “Don’t you think people will ask me ____” question. It’s why I never like to be the one in front unless I have all or most of the answers. Nothin’ worse than “heh, I don’t know?” when people see you out front and expect you to be the one with the info.

…then, of course, I end up being the annoying guy with two hundred questions so that I DO have all or most of the answers. “Well, what if they say this? And this? What about this specific situation? IT COULD HAPPEN.”

I kind of get the impression that Mr. Soul Patch’s plan doesn’t involve to many people engaging in long, intellectual discussions with Ellie. He’s there to provide the substance, she’s there for the spectacle.

I’ve been where Ellie is. It was at a local Anime/Manga convention and she knew I had street cred in many geek scenes(if that even is a thing, it’s just how it was explained to me).

So she wants me to talk about her own manga in order to generate interest for it without giving me the manga to read first nor so much as an outline to look over. All I was told was that it was “Saved by the Bell” meets “The A-Team”.

Not long after people showed up I got struck by “Fsck It All” and started just making 5h17 up.

…course, maybe it would work. The characters aren’t too far off. Screech as Murdoch, Zack as Hannibal, Slater as B.A….we’re running out of male leads, though. Kelly as Face? That could work, I guess, but the original A-Team almost hated a female presence that wasn’t temporary or ornamental. Huh. Maybe there’s more to this than I thought.

It took a couple hours and more than a little got switched around, but in the end it ended up being about 4 teens(two guys, 2 gals) who got fired from their full-time gig as PMC’s and now are “On-Call PMC’s” and thus now HAVE to attend High School as they no longer qualify for home-study or some such.

And so they have to try to get more work in the PMC market and work straight jobs in the mean time to make ends meet (as it’ll follow the “no parents allowed” trope). On top of that there is also the usual High School Hijinks and the kids emotional baggage of ‘trying to fit in’.

Giving someone the needed background info when you expect him to promote something really is one of the basics. If you don’t do it, everything that goes of a tangent is entirely your own fault.
And raises the question of whether there is a reason you didn’t do so.

So… either this will be a booth with a bunch of laptops locked to exploring the site and demoing the capabilities, or possibly this is just a hilariously doomed venture, or this is just a concept that I don’t understand how it will succeed?

I’m not exactly business savvy after all, so there’s that.

Or storywise this is where our poor heroine will either find a real job as a booth babe with a company or hijinks will ensue and the convention will end in bitter, bitter tears.

Damn hijinks, always ensuing like they are…don’t forget we were also alerted to a “rather spectacular breakdown” on our heroine’s part, as I recall, so this may well be the lead-in to that. Or it may be much, much farther away.

Oh man. I know all my fellow programmers and graphic artists winced at another “the next myspace/facebook/twitter” pitch. The only thing missing was telling Ellie she’d be paid part of the IPO and become a millionaire when the thing takes off.

I see this a lot on LinkedIn and other collaboration sites. “We want to make the next social network!” which is hard to do, especially when an established network like the one they are describing already exists. It’s like “I want to make a video game. Of course, I have no idea how to make one…” that you see on boards

I found out that the likes of Facebook and Twitter search for CS grads that can handle doing a lot of big data algorithms. I talked with Twitter, and they wouldn’t give me the time of day unless I had an Ivy League degree for that position. Those companies are also not as sluggish as a company like Microsoft, so if you create something unique, they can move quickly to counter you.

Yeah, it’s going to be very tough to compete with the likes of them. It’s possible, but you need an absolutely brilliant strategy and very good talent to pull it off.

Yeah, typically what happens is someone goes, “Man, if [PopularSite] just [Did One Thing Differently] instead of [What They’re Doing] everyone would like it more!”

… but then never follow it up with, “I’ll go do that and hope all their users decide to recreate all their countless social networking and force all their friends and families to make the move with them. You know, before [PopularSite] decides to just change [What They’re Doing] when they see what I thought of was popular.”

Really, the only people who suffer are the inexperienced tech/art people who don’t know better and think they’re gonna get paid when the site explodes.

Pro Tip for the just out of college crowd: Anyone who tells you to work for pennies (or nothing) because you’ll be rich when they sell the site will neither sell their site nor pay you. If you’re totally desperate for a job try collecting scrap metal on garbage days. It pays better and more reliably.

It’s worth remembering Ellie practically lived on the internet before she got kicked out. It’s a large contributor to what led to her being forced to move out in the first place. Considering she spent a year online instead of work or college, I’d put Ellie’s social media literacy at the expert level.

Yeah. Kind of an annoying topic. Because your boss will have you meet with someone spouting technology names and pretending to be competent. Afterward you’ll be all, “The guy’s a fraud. Everything he said was gibberish” and your boss will be all, “Yeah, but we feel like paying him more than you for a while, then laying off both of you and 1/3 of your department in 4 months when we need to cut costs because we’ve wasted money.”

That’s happened a couple times except for that second part; they never actually figure out in advance with the layoffs/waste thing. It wasn’t the SEO guy’s fault, but do we really need to hire two separate companies that don’t even follow their own SEO advice on their websites when we’re losing money?

Damn Chris….that is intricate. Buildings and cars are always the hardest part of drawing for me….specifically because I have a hard time visualizing them…i always need references….and references can trip you up because you might just copy them instead of coming up with your own building. Anyway….good work…

I am seriously impressed with your architectural representation. Did you use photo/image reference and draw it in or did you convert it in photoshop by essentially tracing it?

I am NOT being critical, I’m interested in the technique you used. I’ve seen buildings and outdoor shots that have blown me away in manga like “Girls of the Wild’s” but I never found out how they were created.

If it’s a trade secret or already answered, tell me to bugger off and I’ll try a few different ways to figure it out for myself. I have this unused wacom tablet that I really need to start using…

Sometimes ill completely fabricate a building out of my head when I draw it, but panel one I did use a reference to draw from. I wanted to show the elaborate architecture of the Orange County convention center. It’s not a trade secret. Lol. Just a ton of work.

Thanks for the reply and the information. Now if I can just convince myself to get off my backside and start drawing again…

Do you use photoshop, illustrator or something else? My early experiments with the tablet and CS5 didn’t yield the results I was really looking for, but I’m a lot more accustomed to pencils, watercolors, etc.

I use Photoshop 7. I have the latest Photoshop, but I’m just so accustomed to using the 10+ year old version I can’t stop. I still draw most of my art by hand and use the computer scan to finalize the lines. And yes.. becoming a pro at using a tablet is a daunting task.

I knew a guy in school – a civil engineer – who used to draw comics on the side. His characters were about as exciting as a water balloon, but the detail on his background art … wow! We used to tell him he should collaborate with another artist: keep drawing the background cells & other items in the story and let the other artist draw the characters.

Guy said no way – didn’t want to give up “creative control” of his comic to some flunky who “knew how to draw meat puppets but had no idea where the story was going”. Go figure….

Yeah I can see that happening. Personally, I envy artists who can pull off elaborate scenery and cityscapes, but in terms of sequential stroytelling, the readers are only engaged by the characters. In my own opinion, characters have to come first. Body language, emotional nuances, general design, etc. Backgrounds add depth to environment, lighting, mood and so on.. but I stress the word “add.” Backgrounds are certainly an important skill to learn, but I can’t find myself thinking they’d ever be equally as important as the characters.

Haha. I was somewhat saving myself from the stress at the time because I did originally plan to have elaborate backgrounds coming up for the convention story. When I thought of “booths full of items surrounded by crowds of nerds” I was okay with the few previous strips having simpler bg’s with just some trees and stuff. ;)

I find myself wondering why Ellie and her entire family’s worth of siblings aren’t on a “do not allow in” list from the center’s employee’s. After all they LIKE their nice vaulted ceilings just as they are….

She ends up dating this guy, doesn’t she? Seems like a girl like Ellie always has at least one chode like this in her background. We haven’t been introduced to any former BFs like this- in fact, have we been introduced to any former Ellie BFs?